Ginger Garlic Baked Chicken

Ginger garlic baked chicken is one of those chicken dishes that I make when I wanted to have a quick and easy home cooked meal but too lazy to fire up a wok, or I don’t want to cook up a storm in the kitchen. It’s one of the easiest chicken recipes to make. The chicken always turn out tender, moist, and juicy. I could practically eat all the chicken drumsticks in one go, with its super delicious, sticky sweet and savory sauce.

I started making ginger garlic baked chicken when I first came to the US many years ago for graduate school. I was always the designated cook in the apartment, and chicken drumsticks were always on sale in the supermarkets at the college town. For $0.99 a lb, I could load up a 5 lb pack of chicken drumsticks for less than $5.00! What’s more, I am partial to chicken, especially the tender, juicy, meaty chicken drumsticks.

This ginger garlic baked chicken recipe is Asian-flavored. I used soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, and honey to marinate the chicken before baking them in the oven. I also added a little bit of Chinese five-spice powder to give it a sweet aroma of the spices. If you don’t have the five-spice powder, you can always skip it, but it’s a good item to stock in your pantry. All the other ingredients of soy sauce, oyster sauce (buy Lee Kum Kee brand), sesame oil, white pepper can be easily found at any regular supermarkets these days. If you can’t find white pepper, you can always use black pepper and it will work just fine.

These ginger garlic baked chicken is a comfort food to me. It reminds me of those days when I was a frugal and poor international student in the Midwest of America. Those days were long gone, but the taste of the ginger garlic baked chicken continues to please the palate of my family, and even my little picky eater loves this wonderful tasting baked chicken.

Made these last week. I just combined all the marinade ingredients then poured over chicken legs in a plastic bag. Let them marinade longer than the 30 minutes, about an hour. Can you say AMAZING!!!! Hubby thought they were to dye for too. Ate the leftovers last night, and they were just as good!! Garlic and ginger did not burn either. Thanks for posting this amazing chicken recipe!!! :)

I marinated the chicken for nearly 2 hours and then grilled it in the oven for about 20 mins instead of baking the drumsticks. They turned out well although marinating overnight might make the drumsticks more flavoursome. Instead of chopping the ginger I actually grated it using a microplane and that gave it a finer texture which worked well with the garlic. Thanks, Bee for a great recipe.

Oyster sauce describes a number of sauces made by cooking oysters. The most common in modern use is a viscous dark brown condiment made from oyster extracts,[1][2][3] sugar, salt and water thickened with corn starch. Some versions may be darkened with caramel, though high quality oyster sauce is naturally dark.[4] It is commonly used in Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer cuisine. Got this just on google

Oyster sauce describes a number of sauces made by cooking oysters. The most common in modern use is a viscous dark brown condiment made from oyster extracts,[1][2][3] sugar, salt and water thickened with corn starch. Some versions may be darkened with caramel, though high quality oyster sauce is naturally dark.[4] It is commonly used in Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer cuisine. It can be found in your Asian isle at your supermarket or any Asian grocery store. Hope this helps

May I please be permitted to post the picture of the ginger garlic baked chicken on my blog?

I tweaked the recipe a bit: * used ginger-garlic paste instead of fresh ginger and garlic * marinaded the chicken in a baking dish and baked chicken in the baking dish * converted the F to C as I am in Australia

I plan to post a “What I was aiming for” (your picture) and “What I got” (my picture)

The post will be published on Jan 30. In the post, I said that I got the inspiration from this site (with link provided). I also post the picture and said that it is from this site (with link provided).

Hi J – trust me, just follow the recipe and it will all work magic. Many people have tried with success. The key to marinating is not to drown the chicken with liquid because the flavor doesn’t go in if they are swimming in diluted and watery seasonings. All the seasonings used here, together with the honey, garlic, ginger will draw out the water content in the chicken, and the marinate becomes watery. If you see my pictures, after the baking, the chicken is super moist as the water content from the chicken came out. This recipe is absolutely correct and very good!

I made this today and the flavor was great but I was wondering about the cooking time you listed. 20 min seems awfully short for chickrn legs. I ended up cooking mine for 45 min. Is there a typo in the recipe?

I stated 20-25 minutes, all depends on how big your drumsticks are, some are bigger some are smaller. The time stated is when the chicken drumsticks are just cooked so they are tender and very juicy. Over-baked will dry them up and not as moist. You can slice open to check doneness.

I think cooking for 50-60 minutes are too long…just check the doneness when the time is up and bake longer if you need to. Cover the chicken with aluminum foil if they gets dark on the surface and the inside is not cooked.

I would like to replace honey with sugar as I was told NEVER Cook With Honey. If so how many spoonful of sugar would you recommend. And is there any different from using brown or white sugar. Your reply is much appreciate. Thank you.

This looks lovely, will try your recipe out tonight! Do you know whether this would freeze well? We rarely have time to cook on weeknights, so a few frozen meals are always handy. Thanks for the recipe!

Made the ginger garlic baked chicken drumsticks tonight and we absolutely loved them! Mine were big, meaty free-range chicken legs, so I did bake them 50 minutes, which was perfect. We used some siracha at the table as a dipping sauce and squeezed lime juice over the chicken too. Served it with a soba noodle/red cabbage slaw from Cooking Light. This is a wonderful recipe–thanks so much. I will try some of your others, too. Just happened to stumble across your website searching for recipies for chicken drumsticks that didn’t involve a grill.

Hi, Ginger garlic baked chicken is new for me and seems to be very testy and delicious. i must try it at home and share with my family. Thanks for the great recipe. Looking forward to see something new as well.

Rasa, just found this recipe and cooked it tonight – fantastic!! i cheated a bit and mixed the marinade in a pyrex baking dish, marinated in that dish, then tossed the whole thing in the oven. it needed a minute or two on each side under the broiler to get a nice crispy outer texture, and flavor was A++! thanks!

Another success of trying your recipe. My family loves it and amazingly my almost 4 year old loved it too! He’s such a picky eater! Definitely going to bake it again! I used deboned chicken thigh and it turned out tender as well! I’m rather new to cooking and your recipe really helps me since it is clear and simple yet the result is so so good all the time! Thank you!

I love this recipe. I’ve made it as the recipe indicates several times. It is now in our regular family rotation. I use 8 large drumsticks, double the sauce (not because you need to but because we like extra sauce), marinate as your time allows and cook as described. I serve it over rice with the sauce and sliced carrots. Very easy if you have the ingredients available. Super yum and healthy!

Hands down, your recipes are my very favorite ones on Pinterest. And your food photography is outstanding! I drool every time I see one of your recipes because the food always looks so irresistible! Now, just imagine if I had a kind, handsome man willing to cook all of these recipes for me every night — Heaven! Thank you for sharing your delicious, beautifully illustrated recipes with the rest of us.

I tried the recipe the other day but the drumsticks didn’t roast well as too much liquid came out. Do you think the recipe would work with a baking rack, or is it just a matter of baking longer (admittedly, these were pretty big drumsticks).

Hi Jason, that’s very strange that liquid came out from the drumsticks. Did you defrost them completely and pat dry with paper towels? Mine was exactly how they turned out, just a little liquid/sauce so the chicken are extremely moist. YOu may try a baking rack and below there is a baking sheet so the liquid drips down.

I made these tonight. I used lazy ginger and left out the oyster sauce as I didn’t have any to hand. They are so yummy and so moist! I popped the drumsticks in a food bag in the fridge and they turned out fantastic. Absolutely no need to have them swimming in liquid as someone above suggests.I’m planning on using the leftovers for lunch wraps.

I would like to take this for an International Food Fest at a local church. Given the event I need to take and keep warm in a crock pot for several hours. How should I best modify the prep time and stand time before serving?

Hi, I wanted to make this today but I have some questions: Can we just put the chicken cuts inside a skillet, grill it for a bit, cover it, and let it steam on low fire until tender? Will it affect the texture or the flavour? I have an oven at home but I have no confidence cooking with it….

Hi! Just want to ask if I can use ready made garlic&ginger paste? How many tsp/tbsp I’m going to put? And did u put any garnish in the chicken? I mean what’s that green thing u garnish in the chicken. Thank you for sharing your recipe. It really looks delicious. I’m planning to make it on my daughter’s birthday.

I am excited to try this and some of your other recipes. I have a small foodie Facebook page, where I try out recipes, take my own picture of what I cooked, along with a link directly to the recipe. May I please have your permission to do this with your recipes? Thank you and I’m so excited to try out your amazing recipes!

I want to bake some very crispy chicken wings and I would like to use the ginger garlic as a dipping sauce instead of a marinade. Will the marinade taste good as a sauce to dip the wings into or to pour on top of the wings?

Very simple recipe but a very tasty result. I’ve made these as prescribed, and watched in amazement as the drumsticks disappeared one by one between lunch and dinner time one Sunday. Thank you for this recipe!